Windows Phone to be an eternal dud?

Despite many years of trying and billions of investments, Microsoft's efforts to capture the smartphone market have been fruitless. Analysts from research firm IDC believe the software giant has little chance of catching up with Apple and Google, and estimate Microsoft's marketshare in the mobile OS market will be just 2.3 percent in 2019, a meagre 0.1 percent gain versus 2015.

Making multi-year predictions about fast moving industries like the tech market is hard and should be taken with a grain of salt, but it illustrates analysts have little expectations of Microsoft. Google's Android is expected to snatch up 82.6 percent of the market by 2019, whereas Apple's iOS is estimated to be a distant second with 14.1 percent of the market, 1.7 percent less than today.

“Despite all the effort Microsoft has put into the launch of Windows 10, IDC does not expect Microsoft's share of the smartphone OS market to grow much over the coming years,” the firm says. Even just-about-giving Windows phones away won't help: the firm says that in 2015 it expects “the average selling price (ASP) of Windows Phones to be US$148, which is $71 lower than Android's ASP of $219. This was brought about by the Microsoft/Nokia push into the low-end mass market.”

But that strategy didn't work and the fact that few mobe-makers are now bothering to produce Windows Phones means the firm thinks Microsoft's in trouble.

Source: The Register